Painted Plaid

Today’s class of the “Simply Watercolor Christmas” course (from Online Card Classes) was called Plaid Patterns, and we were shown how to paint a few different styles of plaids. The instructors cut various shapes from their painted panels to use on their card samples.

I had A LOT of trouble with this class! Drawing/painting straight lines (freehand) is not my forte, and plaids are basically a bunch of straight lines. MANY panels ended up in the trash, but I eventually created a panel from which I could cut my stars. (The crooked lines were not as obvious in small doses. It’s going to take A LOT more practice before I can use a whole panel as a backgound!)

I didn’t have a clear idea of a card design in mind once I finished painting my panel so I cut several stars and greetings to play around with and had leftovers for a second card.

I used water color paper and Kuretake GANSAI TAMBI Water Colors (# 32 red, and #20 black) with a wide, flat brush to create the basic pattern, and then I added lines of #20 gold paint with a ruling pen and ruler. I had never used a ruling pen before; what a cool tool! (HERE is a video showing how to use it.)

The pierced nesting stars were unbranded. The greeting was cut with the “Joy” die by Impression Obsession (DIE436-D). The gold greeting on the first card was cut from a panel I painted with the same gold water color paint I used for the gold lines on my plaid panel. The other was cut from black card stock.

Here is the painted panel (or what is left of it):

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